You edited your post, originally I believe you made it sound more like TCU and Baylor were top programs period. Let's not forget reality. Neither of these programs have ever been to a BCS championship game, neither went to the playoff. Between them they have a grand total of one outright Big 12 conference championship. They've only done anything noteworthy in the past two years (that's very recent history) and really if you think about it I'm not sure what they've done of note that wouldn't apply to say, Missouri. On that note, they didn't even do anything until Missouri and Texas A&M left the Big 12. The idea that hold them up as an ideal of how things should be shows how skewed your perspective is.
It's hard to have this conversation because I have this nagging memory of us arguing about Blake Sims. I have this idea that you were one of the guys disparaging Blake Sims, and even if that was somehow incorrect, I get this sense of deja vu. Your arguments reek of the same unrealistic expectations, and really misunderstanding of what is required of the position.
I think you can probably take that a bit further. Listening to AJ you get the idea he felt he was held back (and didn't become the gunslinger I feared he'd become). Now, perhaps had he become that he might have had better numbers or even higher draft status, but would he have won two titles? Listing a group of guys with 0 titles (pro or college) seems like a bad measuring stick though doesn't it? We've all known for some time now that Big 12 puts out highly touted QBs, that's nothing new.
I think we have to review Alabama's situation to understand what's going on here. Once upon a time Alabama might have been the premiere quarterback school. Bart Starr, Joe Namath, and Kenny Stabler, these guys were out there winning Super Bowls. Do you know who the last Alabama QB to get drafted in the first round? Richard Todd, who was drafted to replace Joe Namath. Scott Hunter, was also drafted because he was considered similar to Bart Starr and lead Green Bay to the playoffs. However, Alabama's reputation as a quarterback school pretty much died with those guys.
Past a certain point Alabama just wasn't seen as a quarterback school, and then eventually the top prospects tended to go elsewhere anyway. It's easy to recruit a QB if you have a few Heisman winners, a couple top draft picks, it's not so easy to get them to come play some place when you say the last first rounder was in the 70s, the last Heisman winner was never. Is that a condemnation of Nick Saban though? No, not unless you want to condemn every single post-Bear Bryant head coach. I mean Mike Shula for instance was a QB coach in the NFL, are we to argue he can't develop quarterbacks?
The fact that, even as first year starters, Nick Saban has had every single starting quarterback in contention for a title says all that needs to be said. That's fantastic, that's amazing, and that sure as heck can't be said about TCU, Baylor, or well any other program that Force threw out there. Now, we have seen a bit of musical chairs? Sure we have, but that seems to have had as much to do with two unplanned departures (Phillip Sims who was backup, and Luke Del Rio who was third string as a true freshman) and two starters/one presumed starter being seniors (AJ/Blake/Coker) as anything else. Things were downright calm in the period from GMac to AJ and when Phillip was the backup and Alabama was recruiting Winston. I guess one would argue too calm and clearly Nick Saban isn't going to hang all his hopes on just one guy, I don't see anything wrong with that either.
